The K of C as agents of communion

THIS year was the declared by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines as the Year of the Parish, a communion of communities.This is the 5th year of the “novena of years” heading to the 5th centenary of the arrival of Christianity to Philippines shores that will be celebrated on March 16, 2021.

The bishops say, “In celebrating 2017 as the Year of the Parish as a Communion of Communities we are challenged to more deeply discern not only the structures of governance of our dioceses and parishes but also of the quality of faith life in the parish, the fellowship, belongingness, and participation experienced by its members. In brief, our focus will be the building of a parish that is truly a faith community immersed in the lives of its people.”(CBCP Pastoral Letter Live Christ Share Christ, 2012)

The parish with its baptistry is the “womb” of the Church where a person is given birth to a new life in Christ.It is thus the fountain and the focal point of missionary discipleship. It is not, as Pope Francis points out in Evangelii Gaudium (EG, 28), an outdated institution, but one that “possess great flexibility still, depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community.”

Such was Fr Michael J. McGivney, the pastor.He made St. Mary’s parish in New Haven vibrant by being open and responsive to the needs of the parish community, following the Lord who proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” (Lk 4:18).

In the few years that the God gave him, Venerable Fr. Michael built his parish to become a faith community that was very much immersed in the lives of his flock.He went out of the institutional Church to be in communion with the lives of his parishioners, especially those who were poor, in prison and those who urgently needed the Gospel preached to them, not only in the comfort of the pulpit but right at their doorstep.

He organized the first council of the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary’s in order to assist him forge a new way of being a parish, of being Church.In a profound insight of the Gospel, he saw that charity, unity and fraternity were the way to become agents of communion in the parish.

Fr. Michael is our model of communion.He is both our inspiration and challenge. As the Church in Philippines observes the Year of the Parish, every Knight is called to be an agent of communion in the way our revered Founder was.v